


My Sweet Lord

by ursoself-satisfying (catbusfurrever)



Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018) Actor RPF
Genre: Altar Sex, Church Sex, Clandestine Love, F/M, Love at First Sight, Multi, Playlist, Priest Kink, Religion Kink, Religious Conflict, Religious Guilt, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Taboo, therell prolly be some breeding kink too n stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2019-12-30 18:32:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18320894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catbusfurrever/pseuds/ursoself-satisfying
Summary: Newly commissioned priests are often plagued by secondhand doubts, but how often do they find a body to worship in place of the Lord, Himself?





	1. Genesis 3:23

**Author's Note:**

> yeet ok so this is my Priest!Joe Mazzello x F!Reader fic n I hope u enjoy!!! it is going to be multipart n this is just a vvv rough intro   
> I have 3 inspired playlists (one by my dear friend) for u to listen to while u read (I suggest on shuffle) n on my tumblr I have posted a thanks to those who have helped me research Catholicism n find songs!!! 
> 
> each chapter has a song,, this series is named after My Sweet Lord by George Harrison n this chapter is named after Genesis 3:23 by The Mountain Goats ::)) 
> 
> thanks:   
>  https://ursoself-satisfying.tumblr.com/post/183863668215/priest-fic-additional-info-and-special-thanks 
> 
> Playlists:   
> https://open.spotify.com/user/12143126932/playlist/0hua7Tr8F37xjsZNdy6vXh?si=pqii5LTNQOmHnaA2E9X1Zw (friends) 
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/user/criceloni/playlist/4bIgarlKW4UmBJKCuchp9K?si=2LFgctAcT96CrogG49_AFQ
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/user/criceloni/playlist/4d6lPS8vDpI1SdUzNEBBOi?si=8JjFSR4zRm6CA4GcFIxgLQ

The church was filled to the brim with life, with colors and sounds. There were your newest acquaintances, knitting in the corner. They were the main source of the commotion, all shrill laughs, and clacking needles. On the pews further ahead were some children, and a man attempting to corral them but failing in the end. The squeals of the kids echoed through the crowds and came to where you stood at the entrance. When you took in the scene, you were surprised the doors could even close given how the entire town had flocked to its sonorous halls this cold Sunday morning. Inside it was somehow still just as bright like the blinding clouds had followed your shadow.   
Though you’d admittedly been to few churches in your lifetime, this one you were sure was exceptionally stunning. How such a grand masterpiece ended up out in these boonies was beyond you. You had felt a bit silly at first, attending mass at all but then you saw the steeple and then there you were, standing in awe of how the building seemed to soar above you. The view of it as you had driven up the small hill was impossible to replicate, how the belltower rose over the rolling grass like the sun that unknowingly led you the dawn of your new life. In your juvenile appreciation of its architecture, you lost yourself in the way the worn stone of the support beams still held the tall ceilings up like pillars of salt to the heavens.   
Pillars of salt, you thought, was a fitting image for your situation. Surely you must have blended right into the columns, tributes to every other woman who approached religion and turned their heads back. You were ripped from your runaway thoughts, though, by the bustle of bodies behind you and the urging but ultimately gentle hand that came to squeeze your upper arm. Beatrice stopped at your side and looked up at you with shining, young eyes that got lost in the folds of her lids when she smiled.   
There was somehow a familiar and comforting aura about her and when she touched you a blanket of trust always came with the contact. With the top of her auburn beehive just reaching your eyes, her bent body led you to the very front pew and gestured for you to take a seat on the sandalwood. You did as told with a thin smile, still distracted by the arched ceiling of the chapel around you. 

As you waited in the congregation for the priest to begin his sermon, your mind wandered to the morning, how the belltower rose, tall and white, over the rolling green hills like the first sun dawning on a new world. Impossible to replicate. It was an unknowing sign of things to come. The church wasn’t something you expected to ever return to much less for it to become something you looked forward to, something that would end up being such a large part of your life. That was all yet, to come through, for, at this moment, your thoughts weren’t busied by the future but rather by the thought of the blinding white exterior of this place of worship, how bright it had been in those early hours.   
The organ began and its resonance nearly shook you from your seat, but it certainly caught your attention as intended. The people rose in unison, you doing your best to follow, unfamiliar with the practices seeing as your last time in mass would have been before you were able to remember anything about it. The songs, though, were vaguely familiar, maybe reminiscent of something you’d heard on the radio, seeing as this town picked up almost purely religious stations.   
You moved your mouth along to the words, not knowing exactly what they were but doing your best to look like you were competent. The song ended and you sat, grateful it was over, huffing a bit when your body hit the wood. The father beside you gave you an awkward smile when you attempted to cover your relief with a cough and a straightening of your back.   
Then when you looked up from your awkward encounter- 

Were you very religious? Not particularly, but when in Rome, do as the Romans, right? So when in church, pray. Maybe there had been a little prayer going on in your heart since you entered the building, hell, since you entered the town, a prayer for good things to come, and God must have heard those unintentional prayers because behold before you was what must have been an angel.   
He walked slowly to the podium, robes dragging behind him and a glow seeming to emanate from the crown of his head. He seemed like the only living proof of a God that you could find in the whole of the chapel. His hair was wispy, auburn, and looked so soft, reminding you of clouds, and maybe cotton candy if cotton candy were brandy flavored. Bronze, you thought would be the right shade.   
The stained glass behind him spread like wings, angels on either side surely singing of his beauty and softness. The haze of his arrival washed over you and you were enraptured. You never thought someone could so quickly feel this way. The romcoms were nice, but they were unrealistic, and most definitely did not happen to you of all people. Completely prepared to shove down these feeling, deep down underneath the mattress of your soul and leave them there to rot, you allowed yourself to enjoy the sermon, or at the very least, enjoy the priest.   
God, your gaze hadn’t dropped past his eyebrows before you completely fell. His eyes were soft, pleading, forgiving, but young and curious as well. His nose? You adored immediately. He had, in the kindest way, what you would have referred to as an ‘old man’ nose, a little long, strong, gave him an impeccable silhouette that shown like a holy image again the early morning backlight, sun streaming from the tall windows behind him. His chin was soft and clean shaven, his lips, soft and puffy and lush and looking simply perfect to kiss.   
Kiss? You shook your head briefly, half attempting to banish these thoughts you knew you shouldn’t be thinking, but having been so completely lost in his image that you had missed the beginning of his sermon. The congregation spoke back at him at certain times, words you vaguely remembered from childhood. The echoes of “and also with you” kept you anchored to reality as you struggled not to get lost in the languid movements he made as he moved about behind the podium. He spoke animatedly about- Well, you weren’t exactly paying attention, but you did notice how he spoke with his hands, waving them about when he said something about the glory and grace that has been granted so many. His hands were long and thin and surely would be long and thin enough to fit perfectly between your-   
The organ boomed through the hall and shook you from your daydream, again, and you, again, tried to lipsync your way through the unfamiliar hymn and failing, again. You had stood for the song, and the stretch was welcome after clenching your thighs so obviously together for so long, but when you sat back down, the cool of the wood and the wetness of your panties made you visibly shudder. Dear, sweet, Beatrice placed a feeble hand on your arm as a sign of concern, along with her shakily drawn on eyebrows being raised. Gripping her wrinkled hand carefully, you smiled, tight-lipped, as a reply of ‘I’m fine’.   
You again turned from your elderly friend to the man at the front of the room, the one who demanded your attention with his repetition and his- He smiled, all teeth, cheeks puffing up. A sharp intake of breath was all you could muster before he began to pray. The rest of those looking on seemed to know what to do and you did your best to imitate, but as he pushed his hair back, your lips fell apart and you crossed your legs in desperation, his clergy status seeming to only turn you on more. Fuck, you chastised your own attraction to the taboo. As clandestine as it may have been, though, God, did it turn you on. 

“Lord have mercy,” he said, voice effortlessly both round and light.  
“Lord have mercy,” you pleaded breathlessly.   
“Christ have mercy.” His eyes rose to meet yours for the first time and you choked.   
“Christ have mercy” came out like a whine under your breath, unheard under the rest of the mass, but you knew he saw your chest rise and fall heavily as you seemingly tried to breathe in his prayer and send it back to him.   
“Lord have mercy.” His own voice wavered when he saw you, red in the face and out of breath. His gaze didn’t move from you as you mouthed the words back at him.   
“Lord have mercy.” 

Unbeknownst to you, this was not, in fact, the first time he’d laid eyes on you. He had been watching you, side-eyed, the whole service. If his peripheral served him right, you had been the one with your eyes glued to him since he’d first emerged from his chambers. He saw you stand out in the mass, the last of the congregation to sit down after prayers or songs. He was unable to tell whether this was due to you being distracted or inexperienced, or both, but it caught his attention without catching yours, darting his own away just in time as to not catch your gaze. It seemed to work so long as he kept his focus on the other side of the chapel, though the magnetism of your attentive gaze was hard to resist. The man didn’t let himself give in, not until he somehow heard your barely audible repetitions after those of the congregation. Then you saw one another, caught in the undeniable stare of interest. Suddenly, his lungs felt like iron on his chest and he struggled to finish praying.   
Again, you were pulled down by the older woman next to you, unaware everyone had been seated and for a moment it was just you and him, standing and caught in this sudden whirlwind of unknown attraction. The world seemed to dissolve around you, focus seeming to blur and leave you with tunnel vision on the holy man. His sermon paused for a moment as he stared at you and smiled softly. You could feel his eyes fall down your body, but then his voice picked up again, being carried over your head in smooth, calming waves and you were lost, again, in his presence that loomed over the crowd like the hanging branches of a willow on a sticky summer day. For the remainder of his sermon, you focused less on his words and more on the mystery that might be hiding beneath those layers and layers of robes that dragged behind him. 

If you asked Joe why you caught his attention, he would tell you that you were the first young and clearly not familial woman he had seen in town since his arrival. This was true, that in a town occupied only by elderly folks and new families, you were the first young face he had seen in a long time. Of course, it didn’t help that he found you incredibly attractive and that, as a newly appointed man of the cloth, he had been experiencing somehow more temptations than ever before.   
Every verse he read was budding with new meaning and potential, every lust soaked gaze sent your direction waning to go through with it. There was, of course, a pang in his heart every time the thought of you passed through his head. The allure of a woman who was neither the age of his grandmother nor heavily with child was far more than it should it have been. Father Joe knew it was wrong, that he must keep his mind as clean as his body, his thoughts as clean as his actions. “Good thoughts, good words, good deeds,” he said aloud to the congregation, using his slip as some kind of holy motivation.   
Another song followed, then a prayer and every time he stood the priest had to force his eyes forward, away from the direction you were sitting. His thoughts went back to the way your skirt slid up your thigh when you sat down and how you must have known how much skin you were showing but when his eyes met yours with one final, united “Amen”, he knew you were too distracted to have noticed. 

You watched the priest with unintentional intensity, looking as though you were spaced out, lost in thought and caught on his words, but the reality was that you were simply entranced. All the time you’d spent in this town so far and you had yet to see anyone as young and painfully unavailable as him. Though in the back of your mind you wondered how fidelious some of these new husbands were, you had settled with remaining single, that is, until now. What was more delicious than a man who was not only gorgeous, mature, and clearly into you already, but also one so out of reach, so taboo and clandestine. The beating of your heart when he would slip up and land his eyes on your form a little too long thrummed against the bars of your ribcage like Morse code, an aching organ begging to be hurt. 

The service had ended and Beatrice had eagerly joined her group of cawing old ladies, but not before kindly introducing you to the sweet-faced Father that had spoken today. “Darling, this is Father Mazzello, he’s new to the Ridge.” Her smile was sickly sweet and you couldn’t help but smile back, keeping your eyes from the man approaching you.   
He’d traded the excess robes for a simple black ensemble already and when he approached you and, God, he looked even better now. His hand was extended to you firmly, holding back any eagerness behind a front of eminence and dignity. Beatrice spoke again as you finally lifted your longing gaze from his nimble, capable, horribly inspiring hands, up his arms, across his shoulders, and finally to his green eyes. They were so much prettier up close. “Father Mazzello,” your friend spoke warmly, “this is [Y/N]. The dear has been staying with me and I’ve finally convinced her to get a bit of God in her.” She laughed and you took the man’s extended hand, holding it motionless.   
“I would love a bit of God in me,” you laughed quietly, hopefully only loud enough for him to hear.   
Joe swallowed dryly at your low comment and the softness of your hand, “It’s nice to meet you, [Y/N],” he smiled crookedly, “and you can call me Joe.”


	2. I'm On Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Father Mazzello struggles internally with the wicked temptations of young lust.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Priest!Joe Mazzello x F!Reader, NSFW, ~3.5k words
> 
> A/N: go listen to holy ghost by modern baseball while u read too cus its rly good,,, anyway this one is a lil dif!!! its a lil bg on the town a lil scene setting n its all about joe now!!! 
> 
> Warning(s): sex, religious guilt, some scary images, mentions of ejaculate, uuhhh body horror,,,, i think thats it besides maybe kinda disrespecting ur elders lol ???

Father Mazzello had been distracted, to say the least. His newest regular was different, in the simplest terms, and drew his attention in the most tantalizing ways. See, the Oranges was a retiree town in the middle of nowhere, a Bermuda Triangle of the American Midwest. People arrive and they never leave, usually because they die. It was a bit ironic but very fitting to him that the epitome of classic American ideals, though contrasting, collided with ancient human instinct to create this town where the elderly are unequivocally cared for by the young, who remain the bones of the town and keep everything running. You could live and die in the Oranges without ever even leaving them.   
The Father had always thought the name was deceiving. “The Oranges” sounded like a small suburb in the wet, hot, muggy parts of Florida, not an old folks zone in middle America. There was some part of him that would always dislike living in a town named “The Oranges”. Maybe it was the priestly side of him, feeling dishonest in their presentation when confronted with their reality, meaning they did not and never have grown oranges there. Maybe it was the sunny signposts standing crookedly beside the worn yellow houses, paint peeling and fences fading, showcasing the poor upkeep of people’s own homes.   
He was too harsh, though, because a town, he knew, was not its structures but rather its people, its community. The Oranges had no shortage of smiles, even if they mostly consisted of secondary sets of dentures. That’s what made her smile so different. It was real. Of course, that wasn’t the only reason she stood out, no, it was also her legs, her thighs leading up to her hips, two very real hips, and a waist that would fit so well in his hands and then up a little further where his hands could perfectly cup-   
The pencil snapped with a shock and the man blinked at his scribbles, unintelligible now that he’s been broken from his stupor. The lead tip of his pencil rolled in a curved line off his journal then off his desk and he watched it tiredly before glancing at the clock. It was nearly 1 a.m. The clergyman sat back and huffed, taking a moment to assess himself.   
His hand had wandered to the crux of his black slacks and he groaned at the hardness beneath the cloth. His groan was unintentional but a needed release as he couldn’t “release” how he really wanted to. His thoughts were clouded with this girl- this girl- He barely knew her name and here he was, fantasizing about her simply because she was the only eligible woman he’d laid his eyes on in nearly a year, or probably more accurately over a year.   
‘Why should that even matter to you?’ He asked himself. ‘Why should it matter that she’s eligible? She’s probably not. She probably has a boyfriend, or a girlfriend, even.’ Joe couldn’t help but groan again at the thought of her, pressed against someone else all the ways he wanted her to press against him.   
‘Stop it!’ Some voice in the back of his mind hissed. ‘You’re a priest! It doesn’t matter if she’s unavailable! You’re the one who’s unavailable! You took an oath! You made a covenant with the Lord!’ If Joe were a man to curse, this is when he would curse. Instead, he simply moaned in compliance and gave into his conscience, sighing and giving his erection one last squeeze before sliding his hand back up his body, resting it on his open journal. He ripped out the page he’d been working on, the one describing his ‘newest parishioner’ in exquisite detail. No one would ever see that. No one could ever know he experienced such temporal thoughts. He was a priest, after all, he had to set a good example.   
He spent the next twenty minutes in a headspace he despised, the one he used to eradicate the want that grew between his legs. It was images of the women in the first row of the church with teeth yellow and denture line visible, their smiles wide and slippery. The men in the back few pews have spots on their balding heads that are sometimes protruding and have hairs only growing there and somehow nowhere else. Joe focused on that, on the lumps and aches they vocalized, on the scratching of their smoke warped voices and the pores like pools on their noses. He thought of the way the hands of the mass shook when they went to place money in the collection basket, the yellow of their nails and the chipped polish on the manicured claws. Their skin was saggy and discolored and their hair is matted and fake and he thinks about what they must look like under their musty Sunday clothes-   
He’s soft again, his pants no longer straining and he breathes a sigh of relief, maybe a quiet thanks to God. The priest does his best not to let his mind wander as he lets his feet carry him to his bed where he disrobes, definitely not drifting to imagine how her eager hands would feel pulling his trousers down, nails scraping down his thighs- Joe forced himself to turn the mental image of her tight knuckles to one of chapped and wrinkled ones to keep himself calm. As much as he dislikes subjecting himself to these thoughts, he tells himself he does it for the Lord. The Lord will keep him strong in these times of weakness, he tells himself, in these hours of temptation. He slid into his bed in briefs and an undershirt, letting the softness of his sheets smooth over his skin as it envelopes him and he’s whisked away into a few hours of much-needed rest and revelation. 

Your hands had never been softer. It was the only definable thought in Joe’s head when you pushed up his thin shirt. The fabric bunched up over his stomach and you lowered your head to lick a long, wet stripe up from the happy trail disappearing down his shorts.   
You were naked, straddling him, hips and thighs curved and soft and outlined by the moonlight that shone in from the cracks in the curtains behind you. The luminescence bounces off the soft tufts of your hair that bunched when your nose hit the bottom of his shirt and you kissed the middle space of his chest reverently. Joe was so wrapped in this moment that he asked no questions. His mind was muddled with lust and want. If you met his needy gaze, you would physically see the fog you caused in his brain, shown in the glazed over eyes that tracked your every move. It was like looking in the windows of a rocking teenager’s car, all steam, and sex behind them.   
Your hips ground unconsciously on his crotch where his arousal was obvious and painful and he couldn't keep in his moan. The contact was too much for his near virginal state to handle. Your body, luscious and young and soft, and so easily defiled. It was so sinful. It caused a fire to burn within his loins, reigniting one that had long been a dormant pile of ashes before you came along. Every sway of your breasts as you rose your body slightly from his was another match stricken and thrown to maintain this burn.   
Every clench of your thighs around his waist was kindle to feed it. Your undeniable silhouette was gasoline, your ass weighing on his lap was logs and paper, probably journal pages he’s written and hidden of you, but the way you looked down at him, the way your eyes fluttered and your lashes fell, the way your mouth puckered and curled and glistened, that was the first page of the book to burn. One by one, page by page, you would rid him of his religion, strip him of belief until all that existed was you.   
And he was fine with that.   
Again, Joe felt the contact of your soft pussy pressing over his aching cock and his hand instinctively reached for your hair, tangling his fingers in your locks while his other five went to squeeze at your thigh. Every desperate touch from him was a message; ‘You’re gorgeous,’ ‘please touch me,’ ‘I need you.’ He was practically tracing the letters into your leg as his hand slid down to your knee then back up to your waist. He was still laying down while you were straddling him and grinding against him, occasionally letting your hands wander, pushing up his shirt and licking the skin you could reach without stretching. You had leaned forward to suck at his neck and the holy man about died and ascended to heaven when he felt your tits on his chest and your lips on his neck simultaneously. Your nipples were hard, enough so he felt them drag over his exposed skin when you arched your back and left bruises at his jaw.   
Being so focused on your lips, Joe had lost track of your hands. His were on your ass, groping and kneading with silent adoration, but yours had moved from mussing his hair to tugging at his briefs. The man gasped when your hips left his and then, with a swift and sudden motion, his underwear was yanked down and you giggled. Joe, however, did not giggle. The exposure was shocking and the cold was unwelcome, making his cock twitch and sending a shiver up his spine. It was in this moment that Joe finally took in your image, the bite of the cold shaking him from his focus on just how you felt.   
All his other senses were hazy and the man of the Lord was overwhelmed. You were glowing. Your hair was feathered and voluptuous. Your skin was velveteen and your body belonged in a temple, deserving of an altar and endless worship. He would have sworn he witnessed a halo form around you as well, a golden line connecting one shoulder to the other in a shining arch. Your smile was soft and distracting, but his gaze persisted down your body full of admiration and curiosity. Your chest was supple and your stomach plush, just like your hips and thighs, all there for him to appreciate.   
He sat up to improve his view, allowing himself to be in much closer proximity to you, able now to bask in your scent, sweet and innocent. Then he laid his larger hands on your breasts for the first time. He was almost worried the metal of his rings would surprise you, being cold on your hot skin, but you had no reaction. Kneading with slow gentle movements, he slid his thumb just barely over your nipples, hard and sensitive for him.  
Somewhere in the back of his throat, a question was lost, a search for approval that got stuck on its way out, but it didn’t seem to matter as your constant blissful smile was encouraging enough. He didn’t question any of it.   
Quiet hums vibrated in your throat and your half-lidded gaze motivated the priest to feel more of your body, squeezing at your waist and ass again and leaning forward to drop unpracticed kisses to the valley of your chest. You laced your fingers in the back of his hair, cradling his skull and holding him to your skin, but when his thumb brushed over your clit, you stopped him. His wrist was caught in your grip in a quick and unexpected move that stopped him from further touching you.   
His breath hitched, fearing he’d done something wrong with the way your eyes bore into him, cutting through the silence and bringing him to the reality of what you were doing. Joe felt like he could only inhale, nothing coming out when he tried to push his breath away. He swallowed dryly and your expression softened ever so slightly, dropping his hand to instead wrap your digits around his cock and maneuver it to swipe between your folds. The wetness gathered in your sex and on his tip made for easy entry as you lowered yourself slowly, lashes fluttering and mouth falling open. The man choked on a protest but swallowed it with a moan when his head was sheathed in you, warm and tight and ideal.   
Joe couldn't focus on anything. It was all happening so fast for him, a blur of skin and sweat. You bounced on him expertly and he fell limp at your abilities, a sputtering mess as your buoyant tits mesmerized him. Your hot, heavy breaths rained down on him and showered him with increased want, but he was unable to act upon it, struck dumb by a higher force, and that force was the look you gave him, accompanied by a breathy sigh and a smile when you settled fully on his shaft. He hadn’t realized but he had been holding his breath as you rose slid down him again, audibly slick and aroused. At that moment, the world vanished from around him, all fuzz and static, and all he knew was you and the way you felt, sleeved around him perfectly, undulating and flexing with an ever subtle thrust of his, impulsive and quick, needy and natural.   
Your speed increased suddenly though, and the priest, barely holding on as it was, couldn’t contain himself. Speaking in tongues of love, he groped at you, searching for an anchor to his physical form as an ethereal feeling washed over him, his orgasm imminent and monumental. It was an out of body experience for the servant of the Lord, greater than any religious bliss he’d yet to experience. He could see himself beneath you, his face contorted as yours glowed with elation and he came inside you. He could feel you pulsing around him and heavenly choirs invaded his ears, the stimulation shrouding him in your presence.   
What occurred next was warped and surreal. He was still inside you, coming down but still hard and you were still smiling but the air turned sinister and smelled suddenly not of your scent but of sulfur and lavender. You turned into a shadow over him, no longer a source of light, but rather the opposite; a source of darkness. That’s when your skin began to slip from its place on your skull. Melting like wax, he thought, but his comparison was wrong, so wrong because there were no hot drips hitting his stomach and your hands didn’t begin to pool at his bellybutton. No, instead your soft hands turned to leather and the familiar spots of discoloration and sun exposure began to blossom across your shoulders and chest. He could see your veins, one by one, rise up on your skin on your straining legs. Your breasts sagged and your stomach folded over. Your smile went wider as your lips thinned and eye crinkled, every line on your face growing deeper until he felt the first wisps of your fading white hair fall on his legs. Your nails began to dig into his lower stomach as they grew and then he fell the first few cold objects hit his heated skin. One by one, two by two, teeth, rotted black and yellow, bounced off his chest when you leaned forward.   
Joe wanted to scream. He wanted to cry. Maybe he was already, he couldn't tell. By now he assumed his vocal chord had been removed sometime in the night because, still, nothing came out. He tried, he forced all the air in his lungs out his tense lips like a coastal storm blowing in. He was the winds and the waves and the crashing sounds of ocean on rock and sand as he struggled to break free from the growing weight of the body still on top of him, still around him; shaking, twisting, tears streaming down his red face. You were death holding him down, boney legged and saggy skinned, every part of you being pulled with more strength every second towards your home in hell. He didn’t know what to do with his hands so they flailed at his sides as yours slid up his body with the same disturbing gummy, black smile looming over him and all he wanted at that moment was for it all to stop and disappear. 

The sweat on his forehead rolled down the sides of his face and collided with the tears that were apparently seeping down his cheeks as well. The tears were hot and the sweat was cold and Joe’s entire face felt numb and damp, and it was. His whole body was. His undershirt was soaked through and his neck shiny and dotted with perspiration. He shot up out of bed, sitting upright with wide eyes as he shook as he frantically assessed his surroundings. The desk was still messy, his journal still out, the lamp was off, the window closed and the door locked. Fear still seeped through his bloodstream and ran from his face to his toes. It was electric emotion that coursed through his body, one that he couldn’t shake and that left his hair standing on end. It was deep beneath is skin, a nestled sense of discomfort. No amount of his unconscious physical shakes could rid himself of it.   
He rocked back and forth on his bed for a while, the images of his dream never leaving his head, haunting him like some cliche victorian ghost. His tremors subsided but he wouldn’t be going back to sleep that not, not after that. The drastic shift had gouged a wedge in his heart, one that was now filled with questions and doubts, second thoughts. The fire in his loins burned brighter and hotter and blacker, smoke rising from it in dangerous, polluting amounts.   
Upon the onset of further physical discomfort in the form of a cold patch on his briefs, he opted to spend the rest of his night in the shower, not only washing the shameful premature ejaculate from his underwear, but also his dream from his body, the dream he could only assume was a punishment for his earlier sinful thoughts. On one hand, he was washing her touch away, her soft, sweet, innocent touch that couldn’t be wrong, but on the other hand, the abomination that she’d been warped into left a film over him that didn’t seem to wash off.   
Joe believed in signs and symbols. He believed that God spoke to you in natural ways, every day. The advertisement on the bus next to you at that red light this morning or the constant re-emergence of one specific suggestion throughout your day, seeing the same person everywhere you went, it was a message from God. “There are no such things as accidents or coincidences,” he preaches, “everything here God has preordained. It is predestined and meant to be.” He thought of her, meeting her and her timing. “Trust that this is the Lord’s will.”   
This must be a sign. He thought of all the examples of prophetic dreams in the Bible, all the times the Lord has used this outlet to speak to his servants. Joseph, Jacob, Daniel, Solomon, Nebuchadnezzar- But what did it mean this time? The object of his unsanctioned affection decaying on top of his, immediately post-coitus. It scared him, the implications of it, but it also scared him that he had the dream at all, if he was honest. It was intense. Not only was it erotic, but also scarring. What did it mean for him and his faith? Part of him wanted to brush it aside and ignore any allusions his subconscious was trying to get to him. He wanted to, for once, turn to science to deny the religious answers to his issue, telling himself it was just a projection of some kind of worry, but that would mean he would have to admit to himself he was worried about her, around her, because of her. He would have to acknowledge the effect she had on him and he didn’t want to. He wouldn’t give in to this moment of weakness, so instead he scrubbed his soiled underpants at three in the morning and tried to wash the nightmare from his mind with Shout and bar shampoo, ignoring the heavy dread building in his chest as the hours counted down to Sunday morning, when he would face his congregation of elders and one woman he couldn’t ban from his mind if he wanted to.   
He fell asleep at approximately 4:30 in the morning, face flat on the side of his tub, one hand caked in dried soap and the other clinging desperately to his still clearly stained boxer briefs. He didn’t dream this time, and for the first time he was ever aware of it, he was grateful he didn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!!! theres a lot more to come n if u wanna see some commentary on this chapter check out my blog!! my tumblr is @ursoself-satisfying !!!!! all this n more is over there!!!!


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